The planning service has over the years undertaken various events, workshops and engagement exercises with children and young people to help share what we do and get their views on planning in the city. This has included The Forth Bridge short story competition, Shops in Town Centres and the Junior road safety and air quality events.
In December last year, working with PAS, we delivered three workshops with Hermitage Park and Craigentinny primary schools and Leith Academy. Together we explored the role of planning and how the young people would like to see Leith and the wider waterfront area change in the future. The storyboard below is a summary of the workshops. The full report on the workshops is also available.
Last week the Council’s Planning Committee agreed a report which sets out how we can better involve children and young people in how we plan the city.
We were delighted that pupils from Leith Academy took part in the committee discussions to present their view of the workshops, what they thought was important about their local area and how they’d like to see it change in the future. The discussion can be viewed on the Council webcast (Item 3.1).
We will be encouraging developers to engage with children and young people in major development proposals to ensure they have their say on the future of their city. Our guidance for applicants will be updated to reflect this ambition.
What next?
It is the Year of the Young People and we are committed to better involving children and young people in the planning system. We will be working in collaboration with other Council services and the Young Edinburgh Action programme to ensure we deliver more meaningful engagement.
In April we will be holding a ‘co-design’ session with young people. We hope they will help us shape how to best engage all children and young people in the next Local Development Plan and other projects.
As this progresses we’ll provide more updates on the blog, with a full update going to planning committee next year.
Planning Edinburgh 